Thursday, March 22, 2007

Driving down the Long Island Expressway on a Friday afternoon. Car in front has Jersey plates, and this as the plate holder:My other rideIs an Epic MountAnd don't worry, it was friday afternoon. Traffic was moving slower than I walk!

And a couple years back in crawling Friday afternoon traffic (see a pattern?) on Rt 347 coming home from work (and coincidently on the route to I-con). I'm bored in traffic and looking around me. I notice the two guys behind me are *obviously* on a road trip. Then I see the passenger laugh out loud, slap the driver and point like mad at my license plate... :)I waved back!

And for those that don't about my plate, instead of coming to blog.xvart.com (here), try www.xvart.com ... :) It's out of date. Okay, extremely out of date since I started this blog, which is MUCH easier to keep up.

From a British Columbia (Canada) science museum's upcomig ad campaign. I love it!

This is a neat shot I took of my frog waterbath, filled with ice pellets. We had a storm come through Thursday-Friday last week and built up quite an accumulation. The top of that frog's head is normally more than 6 inches from the bottom of the waterbath!

My parents, who were "in the area" last weekend. They live 600 miles from here, but were going to be "only" 75 miles away on Saturday so we had to go visit! It was a good visit, and we had no traffic problems for once!

Minus 14 inches of hair! It's all going to be donated to Locks of Love, a charity that makes wigs for kids with cancer and other illnesses that cause kids to lose their hair.

And my brother and sister in law got Noah's Sub framed! I did this for them as a wedding gift (took me almost 3 years!) and wanted to make sure they took it to a good framers. It was worth the wait! I am, above all else, thoroughly impressed with the stretching job they did. Check out those edges!

Friday, March 16, 2007

Well, remember how last post I said I was busy? I should have known it would get busier! I had a call from my sister last night with a computer question. As we finished getting what she wanted fixed, she asked what I thought of mom's email. I'd taken the day off work sick (apparently I can't take Biaxin on an empty stomach anymore...) and mom had sent an email to my work account. So I called mom. Turns out she's bought a motorcycle on eBay (another one!) and they were going to be coming almost all the way here to pick it up and pay for it on Saturday. Since they're only going to be about 75 miles away, we'll be going to meet up with them after they arrive and pick up the motorcycle. So... my weekend now looks like this: Saturday:Morning: haircut, bake shortbread as promised for Deirdre's partyAfternoon: last minute shopping for our trip (note to self, grab Tums and Pepto...), dry run on the packing so I know how we standEvening: arrive Deirdre's party for ~1hr, leave to drive 1.5 hrs to meet up with my parents. Dinner with them and a short(ish) visit. Won't be getting home until LATE.Sunday:Catch the noon train to go into the city for the play and meeting afterwards with playwright and cast. Dinner with the group.* Come home and try not to die before going back to work Monday morning!

Phew! And it doesn't help that my insomnia is acting up and I've been up since 3:30... but at least my Formula One season has started again so I'm getting to watch the Friday practice (taped last night) as I write this! And I was good and went to bed too... the TV coverage was just starting at bed time and I went to bed instead of watching it.

* For those that are local: The play/meeting afterwards was organized by a group on Meetup.com called "Culture for the Uncultured". Basically it's for people (like us) who live in the NYC area, know there's all sorts of stuff to do but never find out in time/know how to find it. They organize events, publicized well in advance, and usually managing a group discount. This will be the first one we're actually making since joining the group, but there've been a number I'd like to do, and some recurring ones I've now marked to do on our own I found out about from the group. The scavenger hunt at the Met is deffinately on for next month!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

My current progress on HAED's Frog Prince QS as of Monday morning after this past SAL weekend.

I've finished this Hallowe'en piece except for adding the Bat button, which I seem to have misplaced. This was completed exclusively while gaming.

A Mary Englebreit (sp?) Christmas ornament, also stitched while gaming up in Conneticut when I realized I'd brought everything to work on the Hallowe'en one except the pattern! Good thing I try to keep a quick project in the bag also.

A better photo of my framed Phoenix. It's now hanging over my TV until I find it a permament home. I need to stop working on such big pieces, I'm running out of wall space!

On the news front, we're swamped. In a good way. And we've been very sick. In a bad way. I was back at the doctor's again today for a second course of antibiotics to hopefully get rid of this sinus infection before we fly. Which we do in 10 more days. Wohoo! This coming weekend we've got a party at Deirdre's for St. Patrick's Day. You can't skip it when it's being hosted by your friend who's Irish, now can you? And then on Sunday we've got tickets to a show in the city, followed by a Q&A with the author and star. It should be neat, I'm looking forward to it a lot. Then next Friday we leave! In the mean time at work, which my Dr. would prefer I took a few days off from, I need to complete reports before we leave on 120+ analyses I've completed in the past month. So, swamped. But in a good way. I probably won't post during my trip, but look for loads and loads of photos when I get back!